Tag: Bullying

F‑ing Freddy Fisher started as an experiment. I was taking a class on poetry for children and young adults, and we did a unit on novels in verse. I loved the way those books could convey emotion and perspective so efficiently, and I wanted to try something similar. I quickly realized I’m not enough of a poet to carry a full story in verse—but the inspiration stayed. What I ended up with is a novella made of brief, tightly written chapters, each told from the perspective of a different character. I aimed to be concise and to the point, like poetry, but the story is told in prose.

I still remember my great aunt Viola’s reaction when she read it. “Wow, Mandy—I didn’t know you had it in you,” she said. That cracked me up, because my family grew up thinking of me as the shy, quiet child who almost never spoke—a child I now suspect had selective mutism, though I was never formally diagnosed. I’ve mostly outgrown that, but I still notice moments when I can’t speak up, and I’ve learned to trust the intuition that tells me when I’m not in a safe space. (If I’d listened to that intuition when I met my ex, I would have never married him—but that’s another story.) My Aunt Rosetta is another huge fan and probably the book’s biggest promoter, telling anyone who will listen that everyone—teenagers, teachers, parents—needs to read this novella.